Friends in Low Places

Rewind to..

The Starry Plough, Berkeley - June 3rd, 2010:

We've found ourselves at The Plough from time-to-time hanging out with good friends (photographer Josh Miller always seems to be around when we play there...) and playing what feels like an off-the-grid gig awfully close to home. The "green room" is actually a very small room with an extremely low-ceiling buried somewhere under the bar. Our press shot for Animals In Bloom was shot in the boiler room that's just through the wall. Your dressing room will vary venue-to-venue, and the weirdest gigs always seem to materialize when there is no dressing room at all (try preparing for a for a set where you'll playing in super choppy waters aboard a floating dive-bar with 150 people who are battling sea-sickness- without a dressing room. God we love New York!).

Anyway, not to diverge. Often the make or break for a dressing room, or "band room", is not how big it is or what amenities it might have (or in this case, not-have), but instead who is in it... Are we upset that instead of a proper ice-chest and a (1) fresh bottle of Jamie we are given a rusty metal bucket with six (6) warm PBR's? Not really... Is it weighing on our drummer that in the place of a couple (2) of fresh white towels he is pointed towards a filthy dish rag that smells of decay to wipe his sweaty torso with after the gig? No. Has is become an issue that while smoking is generally encouraged with zest around here, breathing the air in our "green room" is quite-literally choking us to death? Not a chance! Why, then, despite these real-life perils- are we acting like a group of school children on their way to the science museum with a huge bag of weed? Because of who's in this little god-awful room with us- that's why...